Someone once said…
Innovation is the wrong person using the wrong product for the wrong purpose.
It’s an interesting way of thinking about it – sometimes you have to get out of your bubble and get inspiration from the best in the business – any business, not just the best in your industry, but the best in the world. You need to do this because disruption cased by digital technology is not going away and if you think you are safe, you are wrong.
Just ask a taxi driver who never saw Careem coming. Could teaching be the next industry to be completely turned on its head by digital? Does the idea of a classroom teacher really make sense anymore? Is there a better way to educate?
So – before someone else disrupts the industry you are in, disrupt it yourself.
This week, QITCOM showcased some of the initiatives in Qatar utilizing digital technology. A campaign to encourage entrepreneurs took up a large part of the space, with the rest showing off some innovative Smart-City and Smart-Government projects.
The interesting thing about this exhibition was that for every incredible thing – like technology that understands sign language – there was something mundane and half thought through. Being the best in Qatar won’t make you win. Yet another ‘marketplace’ will not be a game-changer.
I must stress that there are some great ideas and some very smart entrepreneurs, but at the same time there are a bunch of ideas that are merely replicating the current model in a digital environment, without considering what is possible with location aware devices, big data or machine learning.
These trends were fully on show at QITCOM, with companies like Alibaba, Huawei, SAP and Microsoft showing what can be done if the innovators don’t say Think outside the box and instead say, What box?
Some say that one of the reasons that adoption of online shopping and other digital transformations have been slower in Qatar is a lack of expertise. While there are campaigns to change this, there still seems to be an old-school approach to getting SMEs online.
I’m always amazed at events like this when you walk up to a stand, pick something that is written in 400 point font – like E-commerce and ask the person on the stand to explain it and they can’t.
Consider this conversation.
Hi. I see you do Ecommerce.Yes.What platform do you recommend?Um, I don’t know, I’m just in sales, I’m not technical. I’ll get someone who can answer your question.Hi. What platform do you use for Ecommerce?All of them? What do you need? We can do WordPress.I was thinking more about Magento or Shopify?Yes we can do that.Do you have Magento developers?We have PHP developers.Ok, thanks for your time.
The opportunity to deliver best practice in the Middle East is obvious, but digital needs to be treated like construction or infrastructure. If it’s not the best in the world, why bother?
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